The prof. Nino Pala is no longer here. Mayor Lucio Giordano announced it in a post. “Professor Pala passed away this morning in his Giardini Naxos, but he was also our honorary fellow citizen. For Santa Severina he was a guide, a teacher of life and also a professor.
He renewed teaching in our high school when he came to teach Latin and Greek in our high school. These were the years of delegated decrees, the opening up of school management to parents and students, but we were ahead with the student committee wanted by the professor. Shovel. The many extracurricular activities. For many generations of students he was the most beloved of professors. But he was also a significant presence in parish life, but also in diocesan life. Loved by everyone in Santa Severina, he was a point of reference for all the mayors who knew him, always above board. Saint Severina remained in his heart even when he was forced to abandon her due to his illness and returned to his family in Giardini Naxos”.
In a note, the Borrelli high school recalls that the prof. Pala was not simply a teacher, but an authentic guide, an educator capable of imagining school beyond the confines of the classroom, long before this way of teaching became common. Telling what he represented for our high school is difficult, because his teaching continues to live today in the corridors of the school, in cultural projects, in the theater, in the desire for discussion and openness towards the world that many of his students inherited from him. The prof. Pala understood that school should not be limited to the transmission of notions, but should become a living experience, dialogue, discovery, civil and human passion. With his visionary way of teaching he has trained generations of students, teaching them to have a critical, curious and free gaze. He brought theater into schools as a tool for growth and awareness, he taught children to listen to the great voices of culture, to engage with the thoughts of authors and with the deepest questions of existence. Many former students, even today, continue to carry forward that lesson of enthusiasm, courage and love for knowledge. This is the greatest mark left by a master: continuing to live in the ideas, gestures and passions of those he met on his path. The “Diodato Borrelli” classical high school today loses a fundamental figure in its history, but will forever preserve the memory of a man who knew how to make the school a place of freedom and authentic growth. Thank you, professor. Pala, for everything he taught us. We will continue to teach along the path you have indicated to us.”